I’ve made a point of taking a break from pictures since ending my Photo-A-Day project. In march I completed four years. Four years of taking a picture (or more, sometimes many more), processing and posting it that same day. Four years of good shots and dumb shots, early morning epiphanies and late night deadlines. Four years of crystalline observations and uninspired snapshots. A few real-keepers. More than a few out-of-ideas self portraits. For four years I tried to take a photo everyday. I missed a couple times here and there, but it was a frame of mind and a way of thinking every single day. Towards the end there were more than a few uninspired shots. So when I stopped at the end of March this year, it was for a breather and some time to collect my thoughts and see where I wanted to go next.

So what of all this? Well, it’s only been a bit more than a month since the end of PAD, but these last few days I’ve started seeing pictures in my head again. A couple of times I went for my camera only to remember that I didn’t have it with me. Ah, missed opportunities. Yesterday I headed out the door and, as I did so, grabbed my camera bag. I’m not sure how long this feeling will last, but for now I’ll endeavor to make the best of it…

It’s going to be hot again today. 109º. With a chance of thunderstorms. It’s not right. We’re in the middle of a long streak of over 100º projected highs. The last of July continues to be oppressive. August looks to be the same.

After having breakfast at Alice’s I stopped for some photos around the railroad spur in Oildale:

I have a fondness for old advertising and advert art. One of my favs is the ad on the side of the Santa Fe railroad cars from the fifties. I found this car off it’s wheels in a junk yard adjacent to the spur this morning:

Well, this is what I’ve been trying of late. I’m dividing my pictures into folders by year, then month and then by day. It makes for quite a few folders, but at least it’s organized. I started a couple weeks ago with putting each day’s shoot in it’s own folder, then sorting the shots and making “darkroom” decisions inside of Adobe Lightroom. I’ve been labeling folders in this format: year_mm_dd, 2006_04_13. It’s a bit of work, but it’s organized. I still need to work my way backwards into the first of the year, and I’d like to work my way back further than that.

On another note, I’ve been thinking about getting a new scanner to replace my old scsi scanner. I have quite a few of my own old photos from college days and my Pentax K1000, plus the family pictures from the last fifty or so years that I’d like to get scanned for archival reasons. I’d like to get all the negatives and prints properly stored and moved off site from home.

I’m thinking of starting a gallery for old advertising signs, the kind on buildings and on the streets. I find too many signs disappearing around town. I stopped today and took a few pictures of signs while I was out.